The FDA’s Poison Lunch Box

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If I didn’t know better, I’d say the FDA was engaged in a plot to kill schoolkids by poisoning them with peanut butter and honey sandwiches and a side of Yoplait. This popular lunchbox meal’s virulent mix of salmonella, illegal antibiotics, and mercury is made possible, respectively, by the FDA’s lax oversight of a peanut butter factory in Georgia and honey imports from China combined with its failure to care that a common method of creating high fructose corn syrup produces mercury (a fact it appears to have known since 2005). The only upside to this food pyramid of death is that it might scare parents into feeding their kids healthier foods. Spinach anyone?

Photo used under a creative commons license from Faces of Death

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It’s risky, but also unavoidable: A full one-third of the dollars that we need to pay for the journalism you rely on has to get raised in December. A good December means our newsroom is fully staffed, well-resourced, and on the beat. A bad one portends budget trouble and hard choices.

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We simply can’t afford to come up short. There is no cushion in our razor-thin budget—no backup, no alternative sources of revenue to balance our books. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the fierce journalism we do. That’s why we need you to show up for us right now.

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